Taxing issues

IT SEEMS an odd admission for Michael Fry (Perspective, 21 June) to “acknowledge that business thrives on evasive practices”. Is tax evasion, as opposed to tax avoidance, conduct the libertarian right-wing would condone? Moreover, suggesting the United States is a paradigm of freedom based on private property is morally reprehensible. Are America’s charities coping with capitalism’s casualties or does freedom mean the freedom to die of hunger?

Collectively, we must be responsible for those who are vulnerable or too weak to help themselves. It seems the right-wing libertarians would welcome a “free-for-all” of thrusting, striving “rugged individualists”.

Arguably, neither turning public services into private enterprises nor relying solely on government furnishes the conditions for freedom.